In Love with Social Order: William Allen and the ‘Science’ and ‘Art’ of Early Nineteenth‐Century British Philanthropy

Abstract

This article surveys the charitable and humanitarian activities of the Quaker philanthropist William Allen (1770–843), who was at the forefront of several campaigns for the relief and schooling of the poor and labouring classes in Britain and the emancipation and ‘civilisation’ of the enslaved and colonised peoples in the broader empire between the late eighteenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries. By focusing on the first series of Allen's periodical The Philanthropist (1811–19), the essay sheds light on the underlying principles of early nineteenth-century philanthropy as programmatically different from the motivations of traditional private charity. Understood as a political yet nonstate activity, associational philanthropy demarcated the space of civil society as the field where the middle classes, still excluded from the franchise, could impact state legislation and public policies. As they shared the same critical views as political economists on the statutory system of the Poor Laws, these philanthropists played a crucial role in enlarging the ‘scale’ of social policy-making from the parish to the nation in the early nineteenth century. The article argues that even though they were religiously inspired, Allen and his associates understood philanthropy as a secular pursuit aimed at promoting material welfare and incrementing the utilitarian ‘stock of happiness’ of society. As such, philanthropy was even explicitly conceptualised as a ‘social science’, which, being driven by a love for an ordered society rather than for other men, prescribed the policies to be adopted by the ‘art’ of government.